This episode talks about information architecture in today's situation of dysfunctional nation-states that have shown no hesitation in terminating or curtailing Internet access within their territories.

An example of a plug computer mentioned in the program (click to enlarge):

NOVA website: Smartest Machine on Earth
Episode premiered last night. I watched it and I think librarians will find this episode interesting and thought provoking.
If you search the schedule at your local PBS website you should find other times this shows. For example Iowa Public TV shows these times:
Thu, February 10, 3:00 PM on IPTV World
Thu, February 10, 5:00 PM on IPTV World
Thu, February 10, 8:00 PM on IPTV World
Fri, February 11, 1:00 AM on IPTV World

The situation in Egypt, much like the recent case in Tunisia, illustrates fundamental flaws in the nature of Internet access. Even though the system is purportedly designed to route around outages like this, failure seems to be easily caused. In conjunction with the proliferation of computer sound cards and software like fldigi, the deployment of radiofax service by outside powers to distribute information may be advisable. Examples of what this might look like are available online. Though such would have required specialist equipment twenty years ago that method for information distribution can take advantage of consumer-grade computer and radio hardware.

A National Digital Public Library that Harvard Library Director, Professor Robert Darnton has been talking and writing about for many months and others (for example, TeleRead Founder David Rothman have been talking and writing about for years) will soon be the topic of a research and planning initiative that will be hosted by the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at the Harvard University Law School.

Publishing industry consultant, Mike Shatzkin, talks about a 15 year old speech of his that he found in his father's papers.

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One thing I’ve heard often and dismissed is that we need print to preserve intellectual property. I figure that digital files are less destructible than paper and that, with any care at all, it should be possible to create more reliable preservation of bits than of atoms.

I still think that. However…

A month ago I was helping my sister clean out some of the old files of my father’s (now gone over eight years, but it takes a while to get around to this stuff.) Among his papers, I found the hard copy of a speech I had delivered at a VISTA Conference (VISTA is now a company called Publishing Technology) in November of 1995. As I started to read it, I realized I hadn’t seen it in a long time. I checked and it wasn’t on my web site. I checked further and it wasn’t in my hard drive.